LESSONS FROM THE PSYCHE GNC SCHEDULE CONSTRAINED DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE 2022 SLIP TO 2023 LAUNCH

About 100 days prior to the open of the 2022 launch period, the Psyche pro-ject realized that insufficient verification and validation (V&V) had been com-pleted to ensure a reasonable level of risk for the launch and operation of the Psyche mission. One key area of concern was in the domain of Guidance, Nav-igation, and Control (GNC), due to multiple issues including organizational in-efficiencies with no direct line of decision making, unstable closed loop testing platforms, insufficient testbed fidelity assessment compared to the flight vehi-cle, late GNC software delivery with residual algorithm concerns, limited test-ing prioritization based on launch criticality, and immaturity of the operations concept for cruise thrusting due to the delayed V&V schedule. In response, the GNC domain quickly re-organized and established a set of management pro-cesses to systematically address the concerns in time for a 2023 launch. This paper focuses on the process and metrics the GNC leadership utilized to systematically address the major issues listed and complete the required launch critical V&V under extreme schedule constraints. Five major aspects are addressed in this paper: (1) GNC domain organization including roles and responsibilities; (2) testbed shakeout to ensure the fidelity of the closed loop test venue; (3) re-organization of the verification and validation planning and execution; (4) expedient algorithmic deep dives; and (5) metrics developed and utilized for rapid re-prioritization of work. Each of these areas were worked in parallel and all needed to be completed prior to final system level testing that was required before launch. As such, GNC was on the critical path for approx-imately eight months of the twelve-month slip. GNC was able to successfully resolve all issues critical for pre-launch and support system level testing. Psy-che successfully launched on October 13, 2023. GNC behavior in flight has been nominal, with no residual issues seen from any of the concerns that neces-sitated the slip.